


That Which Is Best In Me

by historymiss



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, Oneshot, women of dragon age challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-08
Updated: 2012-03-08
Packaged: 2017-11-01 15:53:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WARNING: allusions to abuse.</p><p>Gifts are to be shared. Curses are pushed down to be forgotten.</p><p>Bethany Hawke meets Ella.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which Is Best In Me

Life in the Circle is both better and worse than Bethany expected. Not that she was eager to go; of course she wasn't, and Anders' stories of the tower in Lake Calenhad had not made her any more excited at the prospect. But the worst had happened, and that was some comfort. If you live with an axe over your head your whole life, there is some relief when it finally falls.

Bethany learns to take comfort in the small things, to retreat inside herself and regard the Gallows with a cool detachment. It helps that the Templars seem to be afraid of her. Maybe they've heard of her sister- who's she kidding, of course they've heard of her sister- or her maybe even her father or her work with Athenril, or maybe it's just what she represents. Maybe the idea of a mage as old as she is, unharrowed and untrained in any formal sense of the word and yet not mad or demon-possessed and actually quite alright, thank you, is just too scary to fit into their worldview. Maybe they're just not very chatty.

If it isn't clear, Bethany has a lot of time to think these days.

Ella is one of her first pupils. They sit opposite each other at breakfast, perhaps two mornings after Bethany's Harrowing, and Bethany notices that the girl has a black eye.

This is the worst thing about living in the Gallows. The bruises, the injuries, the things left unsaid. The things that you simply know, without being told, and that you can never, ever talk about except in whispers in the dark or in corners, hurriedly snatched away from the Templars that patrol them. 

Bethany has never really liked whispering.

She extends a hand and, quickly, summons a light that she turns into a butterfly. Ella's jaw drops into her porridge.

"That's beautiful." she says, reaching out to touch it. "I never knew magic could be so.. so.."

"Pretty?" 

"Useless." Ella says, before she realises how it sounds and blushes, the skin around her eye turning livid in a way that makes Bethany wince. "I'm sorry."

Bethany smiles, and sets the butterfly's wings flapping in a shower of sparks. "One of my friends taught me this. She said that if we don't use our magic for fun sometimes, we waste the gift that the Cre- that the Maker gave us."

Merrill had been able to make her butterflies sing, but Bethany never quite caught the knack- though after practice she could make them trail shining stars or glow different colours, which Merrill never could. They would trade them in the dark as they followed her sister, passing the time with little nothings until there were bandits to be slain.

"Magic isn't a gift." Ella tears herself away from the butterfly and goes back to dutifully spooning porridge into her mouth. Her voice drops lower, and the light fades from her eyes. "Magic is a curse."

It would be more convincing if she wasn't clearly repeating every lesson she'd ever had- everything that Bethany has been hearing since she walked through that gate and into this small stone world. 

"I used to think that, too." Bethany agrees, extinguishing the light in her hand and turning back to her own breakfast. "But then I think of how beautiful it can be, even in the darkest of places." She pauses, thinks. Gifts are shared. Curses are pushed down to be forgotten.

"Do you want me to teach you how to do that? To make a butterfly, I mean?"

Ella nods, though she doesn't look up at Bethany. "Yes, please."

They find an old room in the library, once intended for study but now bare and dusty with disuse. The mages in the Gallows find it best not to bring attention to themselves with too much practice. Bethany shows Ella how to hold her fingers, just so, will the light into life, and shape it into something recognisable. Ella practices again and again until the room is filled with a whole shining flock of butterflies.

"Here's something else." Bethany says eventually, when she feels that the time is right. "Avert your eyes."

Concentrating, she builds the light in her hands, making it bigger and brighter and brighter until she cannot bear to look at it, then releasing it in a flash. Ella turns back to look at her and blinks.

"It will blind, but it doesn't leave a mark. It doesn't take much energy, and it can be cast quickly." Bethany says shortly. "You can call it an accident- temporary loss of control."

Bethany found this trick out her first year in Kirkwall. Before she could use her magic for anything pretty, she'd always known how to use it to distract, how to harm without leaving a mark- how to escape. It’s the product of a life spent always on the run, and Bethany hates herself a little for needing it.

"I don't understand." says Ella, although they both know that she does. 

They avoid each other's eyes for a moment. 

"Thank you." Ella dips her head in a gesture of respect: the same way the students sometimes thank their teachers. For the first time since she came here, Bethany feels like this might be a home and not a prison. "You should show that to some of the other girls."

Bethany never envisioned herself becoming a teacher, but then the Maker did move in mysterious ways. And Andraste knew that these girls needed somebody who had been living in the real world to teach them, if only to tell them that there was a real world waiting for them out there, big and bright and beautiful.

Once upon a time, her father had told her that her magic should serve what it best in her. And her mother had told her, kissing her hair, that the Maker had plans for all His children- and that He gifts them appropriately, for when the time comes. 

"I think I will."


End file.
